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Sunday, March 13, 2011

Thrill as Our Heroes Bravely Watch Television!

You'll be pleased to know I'm back to just covering two chapters.

This chapter begins with Moishe and Eli receiting verses from the Bible because even Jenkins is smart enough to realize he can't possibly create prose worthy of prophets. I'm just disappointed that he didn't replicate Stephen's sermon to the Sanhedrin though that Stephen did have a tendency to go on about social justice, stuff that RTCs just can't get behind.

Anyway, we do get this wonderful quote from Bruce which makes you want to slam your head repeatedly against your desk.

For those of you wondering, this is referring to a Muslim graveyard on the site.

"Jewish tradition says that in the end times, Messiah and Elijah will lead the Jews to the temple in triumph through the gate from the east. But Elijah is a priest and walking through a graveyard would defile him, so they put a cemetery there to make the triumphal entry impossible."

Ah, those evil Muslims, always acting so evil and muslim. You got to wonder that if the Muslims didn't believe in the messiah, why would they bother with such calculating evil?

Sorry for the poor quality of the snark but I tried to find out more information on the Muslim graveyard but all that came up were websites of dubious quality making similar claims as Ellanjay.

Vicki, meanwhile is in solitary and tries to witness to the girl who got her locked up to no avail.

But it turns out, the eeevil they were trying to use a message from Vicki as a trap, but the YTF figure it out in time, and return home only to see a police car in the driveway. It turns out someone tried to break in and Ryan called Tom Fogarty. Pity, I was rather hoping that he had somehow escaped the book. Anyway, that's the end of that chapter.

Ugh, all they do is hand out their stupid paper and watch TV at school. Does Ellanjay really believe this is how you hook in those young'uns, with lots of tv-watching action?

Basically, for those curious, it's a repeat of what happened in the adult books, with the treaty, the gift of air force one, and everyone being surprisingingly willing to destroy their weapons like characters in a bad Superman movie.

That's it for this week. Next week, we finally hear from the incredibly wrong-headed prophet, Tsion ben Judah.

I'm not Jewish, but googling tells me that merely walking in a graveyard is not considered 'unclean'; the word, when used in Judaism (and, really, any religious tradition), means 'something that is not where it should be'. Dead bodies belong in the ground, so graves are perfectly 'clean'.The processional gate referred to is probably the Golden Gate, set in the East wall of Jerusalem. According to www.templemount.org, people of all faiths have been buried outside that gate - which has been bricked up since the 13thC - pretty much since Roman times, because of ancient traditions linking the East with God and the Messiah.I found all that with about 20 minutes of googling; if I knew any rabbis I could probably have found out a great deal more with a quick email. But Ellenjay obviously had a deadline to catch.....

Hm, it does look like Jewish priests - Kohens - are forbidden to enter graveyards (though whether this applies to non-Jewish graveyards is unclear) or they will be "unclean". However, that's a temporary condition that they can rectify by doing the right things.

Which means that even if the graveyard was put there for that purpose, it's a failed attempt.